Court convicts former Olerex worker over 67,000 litres of stolen fuel

ERR reports that a court has convicted a former Olerex employee of stealing nearly 67,000 litres of diesel from a fuel station in Jüri. The court handed Igor Sorokin a suspended prison sentence of two years and six months, with a three-year probation period, and ordered him to pay Olerex 108,589 euros in damages. The judgment is not yet final.

Prosecutors said Sorokin used his access to the station’s systems while working as a customer service employee to steal diesel from storage tanks on 51 occasions between December 9, 2022, and January 25, 2024. To conceal the thefts, he allegedly switched off the station’s video surveillance before pumping fuel into tanks in a vehicle he used.

The prosecution valued the stolen fuel at nearly 108,600 euros. The court found that the thefts were systematic and committed on a large scale.

North District prosecutor Toomas Tomberg said evidence including work schedules, surveillance logs, tank data and witness statements supported the charges. Sorokin was caught during one incident in January 2024, but the court found the other alleged episodes proven by the combined evidence, Tomberg said.

According to the Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs, more than 2,000 fuel thefts have been registered this year, nearly 50 percent more than a year earlier. The ministry said the increase does not necessarily mean that more people are stealing; it may reflect more systematic offending and cases being classified as crimes because they are repeated.